Massachusetts Senate Candidates Pull Out All Stops Ahead of Election

Jan. 18, 2010— -- As Massachusetts voters prepare to vote Tuesday in a special election to fill the Senate seat occupied by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy for 46 years, the candidates in the high-profile fight are pulling out all the stops.

State Attorney General Martha Coakley, the Democrat, unveiled a new TV ad today featuring President Obama stumping for her in Boston Sunday.

"Every vote matters, every voice matters. We need you on Tuesday," Obama is shown saying at the rally, where, in a scramble to keep the seat, he held a last-minute pep rally for Coakley, 56, and attempted to excite the Democratic base that dominates the state.

The fight for Kennedy's old Senate seat has gone down to the wire between Coakley and Republican state Sen. Scott Brown, 50.

A longtime Democratic stronghold, Massachusetts is the last place Democrats would expect to become a battleground state. Both campaigns have spent millions of dollars in commercials, and volunteers have made hundreds of thousands of phone calls, and have come from as far away as Walla Walla, Wash. But the race is bigger than just Massachusetts. At stake is the president's health care reform initiative.

If the special election Tuesday goes to Brown, Senate Democrats will lose the filibuster-proof 60-seat majority they currently enjoy. They need 60 votes to pass a health care bill and other Democratic priorities over Republican objections.

Brown, a lawyer and former model, has vowed to vote against health care overhaul if he is elected.

"As the 41st senator I can at least allow them to, you know, maybe look at things a little differently," Brown told ABC News in an interview.

Today Coakley invoked the memory of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. to make her pitch.

"If Dr. King were here today, he'd be standing with us," she said. "And I know that he would be standing with us on the front line for health care, not as a privilege but as a right."